


Finding Yourself Being Young, Being Dumb, and in Love

by God_of_Doors



Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Confessions, Developing Relationship, M/M, Wet Dream
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:01:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22754437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/God_of_Doors/pseuds/God_of_Doors
Summary: Teldryn is in utter denial about his feelings toward Arden, until his repressed desires unexpectedly out themselves and Arden insists that he figure it out.
Relationships: Male Dovahkiin | Dragonborn/Teldryn Sero
Comments: 1
Kudos: 50
Collections: Arden and Teldryn





	Finding Yourself Being Young, Being Dumb, and in Love

**Author's Note:**

> Some mentions of sex and genitals but it's not really graphic.
> 
> Heart's Day is on the 16th of Sun's Dawn, so technically this little confession fic isn't late.
> 
> TItle taken from Hotel Walls by Smith & Thell. The other song that inspired small bits of this fic is Cha-Ching (Till We Grow Older) by Imagine Dragons.

_ Golden brown skin, smooth, supple, dimpling under my fingers. A mouth, hot, wet, pushes against mine. Heat surges somewhere deeper, all consuming. Pressure grows inside, hot, tingling, pulsing-- _

Teldryn snapped awake a full second before his orgasm hit, long enough for the horror of his circumstances to register, but not long enough for him to do a damn thing about it. He slapped a hand against his mouth, biting down on the meat of his thumb in a partially-failed attempt to keep himself from vocalizing the unwanted pleasure that swept through his veins. Had he been a willing participant rather than a victim of his own sex-deprived mind, he might have considered it a rather stellar orgasm. As it faded, he was left breathless and horrified, and he let his hand flop down onto his chest where he could feel it move slightly with every beat of his pounding heart. He didn't recall having a sex dream in years, and it had been even longer since one had brought him all the way to orgasm. Movement beside him sparked a fresh wave of dread, and he squeezed his eyes shut. A few moments later, he felt the smooth wax of a candle lightly tap twice against his knuckles.

“What makes you think we need  _ any _ light in here right now?” Teldryn grumbled, voice rougher than usual.

“You really want to get cleaned up in the dark?” Arden asked, lightly tapping his hand again with the candle.

Denial and playing dumb were apparently out of the question, then. Teldryn grimaced, but flipped his hand over and pulled a bit of magicka into his palm, producing a bit of flame for a moment before letting it fizzle out.

“Wait. Do it again. It didn’t light.”

It was the unexpectedly loud sound of the candle hitting the table and clattering to the floor which made Teldryn realize that grabbing the thing out of Arden’s hand and flinging it across the room had probably not been one of his best ideas. Fingers of steel suddenly closed around his wrist, strengthened from decades of archery, and Arden put his mouth right next to Teldryn’s ear.

“You’ll want to calm down, or else you’ll have to explain to Lydia why you’re having a hissy fit at two in the morning when it wakes her up.”

Teldryn had forgotten about Lydia, sleeping not too far away in the only other bedroom in Arden’s tiny house in Whiterun. He let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding as a different kind of heat rolled over him. Embarrassment over the hot mess in his pants didn’t hold a candle to the shame of losing his temper over something so trivial. He opened his eyes and flexed his hand, silently requesting that Arden release his grip. Arden didn’t acknowledge it for a moment, but Teldryn was more willing to lay there and wait him out than he was to either apologize or look him in the eye.

Eventually, Arden loosened his grip, and Teldryn silently pulled away and got up. The sensation of liquid sliding down his thigh made his skin crawl, but he prioritized retrieving the candle and lighting it, more as a gesture of goodwill than any desire to see or be seen. He stripped off his pants and made quick work of wiping himself down and digging out fresh underclothes, though the mess caught in his pubic hair would have to wait for a proper bath later. The single furtive glance he cast over his shoulder revealed that Arden had moved so that he was sitting cross-legged, back against the headboard and eyes tactfully trained on his hands folded in his lap.

It wasn’t that Teldryn felt any particular need to be modest around Arden; modesty was too impractical for the lifestyle they led, and any awkwardness about seeing the other’s body had faded early. The issue now was the image of golden brown skin under his hand that kept ghosting through his mind. He had no doubts as to who exactly he’d been dream-fucking, even if the rest of the details had been lost to Oblivion. Maybe he’d been letting himself get too close. Arden was still technically his employer after all. He’d lost sight of his professionalism. There was nothing to be done about it at the moment, as Breezehome only had the two beds for three people, but at the next opportunity, Teldryn resolved to begin reestablishing that boundary that had been broken down all the way back on Solstheim.

“Teldryn?”

The merc flinched, unsure exactly how long he’d been staring at the dresser without moving. He sighed and quickly finished up, then brought the candle back over to the bed. A quick semi-subtle pass of his hand over the mattress as he climbed back in revealed that everything had been successfully contained, and he silently thanked Azura for small mercies.

“I don’t suppose you really want to talk about this,” Arden said softly, remaining upright even as Teldryn shuffled down into the bedding.

Teldryn gave a derisive huff. “No, not particularly.” He extinguished the candle and set it gently on the nightstand, though as much as he hadn't wanted to light it, the return of the darkness only served to make him more viscerally aware of the presence beside him. Maybe he shouldn't have gotten back in the bed. It wasn't as though he was going to get any more sleep that night anyway.

“Not even the part where you were moaning my name?”

Teldryn stilled. So much for small mercies. “Can we just go back to sleep, please?”

“Are you interested in me?”

“Oh, for the love of Azura…” Teldryn sighed and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes to try to ease the tension there. “You’re reading too much into this, Arden. It doesn’t have to be like that.”

“…I don’t mind if it’s like that.”

Teldryn’s world ground to a halt. Arden was interested in him. It made so much sense, the innate trust, the constant checking on his well-being, the indiscriminate acceptance of all his quirks. He’d thought that it was just the way Arden was, but now that he thought about it, the skittish Bosmer didn’t act that way with anyone else, even Lydia. It hadn’t seemed odd on Solstheim, as Arden had essentially hired him to be the sole person he could trust, but back in Skyrim where Arden knew people and should have felt more comfortable, he was still clinging to Teldryn like an emotional lifeline. Maybe the boundary Teldryn had been hoping to rebuild had never existed anyway.

Besides, it wasn’t as though the reciprocal thought hadn’t crossed his mind. Maybe keeping an eye on Arden had been just a job in the beginning, but it had become so much more than that in a terrifyingly short time. Arden had never ceased to impress him, from his archery skills to his determination to his compassion. He was trusting and optimistic and innocent, constantly pointing out beauty in simple things that Teldryn would never have noticed before. Lately watching Arden’s face light up for any number of reasons had become the highlight of his days, and trying to conjure that light on his face had become his hobby.

“Arden, we shouldn’t.” The words were almost painful to say aloud.

“Why not?”

Teldryn grimaced at the poorly-masked disappointment in Arden’s voice. “You’re still young. You don’t need to be saddled with some bitter mer five times your age.”

“I literally paid to be saddled with you.”

“You’re blurring the line between mercenary and prostitute again.”

Arden huffed. “Prostitutes don’t usually have wet dreams about their clients.”

Teldryn soldiered through the fresh wave of mortification. “And you would know this, how?”

“Don’t change the subject. Give me a proper reason we shouldn’t pursue this.”

Teldryn felt suddenly vulnerable, lying on his back as he was with Arden still sitting upright, looming over him. He pushed up into a sitting position and twisted so that he was facing the center of the bed, with Arden’s shadowy silhouette off to the side in his periphery. “You’re pushy tonight, aren’t you? Why isn’t ‘You’re too young’ a proper reason?”

“I’m not a child, Teldryn.”

He scoffed, and it came out sounding far more unkind than he’d meant it too, but he couldn’t take it back now. “Barely. Congratulations on completing puberty but you’re still so naive and…I don’t know…pure.”

“…You realize I’m not a virgin either, right?”

Teldryn had not realized that, and even now trying to imagine Arden in bed with someone else made his stomach curdle. When he didn’t respond immediately, Arden shifted closer to him so that their knees were touching, and Teldryn tried swallowing to dislodge the lump that formed in his chest. It didn’t work.

“Teldryn.” Arden’s voice was barely above a whisper, but not in a seductive manner. It sounded more like Arden was trying to comfort him. “Tell me to back off and I will, but I won’t believe you if you tell me you don’t want this. I know you. You would have denied it immediately if you really felt that way, so don’t lie to me.”

Teldryn couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t figure out what his hang-up was, but some unformed thought was niggling at the back of his mind, keeping him rooted to the spot. “I…I can’t,” he ground out. The lump in his chest was making his voice sound strangled.

“Why not?” There was no disappointment in the question this time, only encouragement.

Teldryn dropped his face into his hands, scrubbing at his eyes and then his scalp as he tried to sort his thoughts. “There’s not a future in this,” he settled on eventually. “Either of us could die any day.” He wasn’t sure that it really encapsulated the issue, but it seemed a fine enough place to start.

“Exactly. Wouldn’t you rather get the most out of life instead of wondering what could have been?” Arden had been gradually leaning closer while he spoke, but he stopped, waiting for Teldryn to be the one to close the gap.

An old memory flashed through Teldryn’s mind from when he’d been living in Windhelm, battling poverty and cold and a near-constant case of pneumonia. _“You need to get out there and live your life, Teldryn,”_ Ambarys had told him. _“Look at yourself. You’re not going to survive much longer in this kind of environment.”_

The flashback was gone as quickly as it struck. Teldryn still felt disinclined to move forward, but he knew that stagnation was worse than risk. What he was risking, he wasn’t sure, but he figured he was about to find out. He leaned in, resting both hands on the bed for support, and brushed his lips against Arden’s. “Yeah. I would.”

Arden pressed into the kiss. Attempting to tilt his head so their noses didn’t get crushed, Teldryn discovered his neck didn’t quite bend that way, prompting him to lift up onto his knees for leverage. Arden immediately grabbed him gently by his hair and pulled him back down to the bed with him. In the resulting reshuffling of limbs, Teldryn brushed against a rather protuberant firmness between Arden’s legs, earning him a gasp, and he chuckled against Arden’s lips.

“Don’t laugh at me,” Arden mumbled, but Teldryn could feel his smile. “I haven’t gotten any in a while, either, and you were making some damn erotic noises very recently.”

Teldryn shifted his mouth to murmur into Arden’s ear. “Shall we take care of that, then?” Arden shivered, prompting Teldryn to smirk. He was nervous about navigating whatever complications this was going to cause in their day-to-day relationship, but he knew all the tricks of a good performance in bed. However, Arden surprised him a bit by drawing back a little.

“Not tonight. I don’t want to rush things. Besides, I’m really sensitive and I’m not going to be able to be quiet, and I don’t want to subject Lydia to that.”

“Something to look forward to, then.”

They continued to shift between bouts of kissing until Teldryn was on his back with Arden halfway on top of him. Arden’s erection was hot and thick against Teldryn’s hip, but remained ignored by both of them. Teldryn threaded his fingers through Arden’s long, silky hair while Arden traced his fingers along the bottom edge of Teldryn’s mohawk, and after a bit Arden seemed to tire of kissing and rested his head under Teldryn’s chin.

“Is this okay?” he asked quietly “I mean…you do want this right? You didn’t just agree because I was pressuring you?”

Teldryn hummed thoughtfully, idly tracing a finger over Arden’s shoulder when the smaller mer tensed. “You were pressuring me to figure out what I actually wanted and why I wasn’t pursuing it. I decided that this is what I want.”

Arden relaxed with a sigh and pressed another kiss against Teldryn’s throat. “Okay. Okay. Good. That’s good.” His voice got quieter with every word until he fell silent, though Teldryn could tell he wasn’t asleep, just content.

Neither of them went back to sleep for a long while, but Teldryn wasn’t worried. They’d planned for the next day to be a market day anyway, so short of some kind of bizarre emergency there wasn’t going to be much need to be on high alert. Still, he continued smoothing the pads of his fingers over a lock of Arden’s hair, letting the silky texture soothe his nervous energy. He wondered how much discussion there was going to be about the night’s events. Arden liked to talk about feelings, and while Teldryn rather didn’t, he knew that a proper romantic relationship was going to need a little discussion. Arden had specifically declined sexual engagement on the premise of not wanting to rush things, so he obviously had some kind of timeline in mind. Teldryn began to regret using Arden’s age and perceived maturity as a basis for denial, since he now intended to defer to him on most relationship matters considering his own lack of experience in that field.

Finally, just as the dim light of dawn began to filter through the room, Teldryn’s anxiety-driven thoughts began to grow disjointed and he dozed off, fingers in Arden’s hair finally going still.


End file.
